This invention relates to an electric shaver. Various electric shaver configurations have been proposed to shave as quickly as possible or to reduce unshaved remaining whiskers. There are many different types of beards, including stiff, soft, long, short, straight and curly. Further, there are difficult to shave regions such as under the nose on the cheek and on the chin line.
Rotary type shavers and reciprocating type shavers are used, for example, depending on skin and beard conditions. Further, these different types of electric shavers are provided with trimmer blades for cutting hair such as sideburns, and with outer blade slits for pulling in and cutting curled whiskers.
A reciprocating type electric shaver with multiple heads combining arch-shaped finishing blades and short roughing blades provided with slits is well known. Turning to FIG. 1, this type of reciprocating electric shaver is shown. This reciprocating type electric shaver has a body 1, and a head section 2 provided at the upper end of the body 1. Driving parts such as a battery, motor, and vibrator which converts motor rotation to reciprocating motion, are provided within the body 1. In addition, a power switch 3 which can slide up and down is provided on one surface of the body 1, while a retractable trimmer 4 is provided on the opposite surface.
The head section 2 is provided with four rows of shaving blade heads. In the center, it has two rows of arch-shaped blade heads 5, and on either side, it has rectangular blade heads 6. The arch-shaped blade heads 5 have small holes in their outer blades and are used primarily for finishing or finer shaving. The rectangular blade heads 6 have slits in their outer blades and are used for rough cutting of a curled beard.
Turning to FIG. 2, an enlarged view of a rectangular blade head 6 is shown. A outer blade 62 of the rectangular blade head 6 is formed with a cross-sectional shape of an inverted-U which surrounds an inner blade 61. Slits 63 are formed in the outer blade 62 which span from the top surface to the side walls. Short curled whiskers can be guided into the slits 63 through the top surface or the side walls of the outer blade 62. Therefore, a rectangular blade head 6 can cut a curled beard short.
After curled whiskers are cut short, closer shaving is performed by the previously mentioned arch-shaped blade heads 5 provided adjacent and parallel to the rectangular blade heads 6. Because rough cutting and fine cutting are performed continuously in this manner, a beard can be shaved efficiently and conveniently. Further, since each rectangular blade head 6 is made in a long narrow shape which follows along the shape of the arch-shaped blade head 5, the head section 2 can be made compact.
However, the previously mentioned rectangular blade heads 6 cannot sufficiently cut hair such as long curled beards or sideburns. The slits 63 provided in the outer blade 62 of the rectangular blade head 6 are formed over an extremely narrow region and the length of each slit 63 is also quite short. Therefore, curled whiskers longer than the slit length or large curly whiskers cannot be adeptly guided into the blade head.
This type of hair, such as long curled beards and sideburns, can be cut using the previously described trimmer 4. However, the trimmer 4 is provided in the body 1 of the shaver and cannot be used continuously with the blade heads disposed in the head section 2. Each time the trimmer 4 is used, an operation to open and close the trimmer 4 is required. Further, the trimmer requires trimmer parts on the shaver body 1, as well as internal parts such as those to transmit driving motion from the vibrator to the trimmer. This results in a large number of parts and a complex structure. In addition, the shaver body must be enlarged to fit these extra parts.
Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide a reciprocating type electric shaver wherein the trimmer blades and the beard shaving blades can be used conveniently without interrupting continuous shaving, and the trimmer structure is simplified to reduce the number of parts in the shaver body and to reduce the size of the shaver.
The above and further objects and features of the invention will more fully be apparent from the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.